Adding statistical context to the Rich Bisaccia discussion

After another dismal showing by (at least a few parts of) the Packers’ special teams units, Rich Bisaccia is once again getting the wrong kind of attention. A Blue 58 listener messaged me mid-game to ask “what does Rich Bisaccia actually do?” and I can’t blame anyone for asking the question.

Others have since written in on our Discord server (which you can access by becoming a paid supporter either through Patreon or Substack) about what, if anything, needs to be done about Bisaccia. What are the Packers options here?

For starters, I don’t think Bisaccia is going anywhere by anything other than his own volition. The Packers seem high on him, he’s reportedly well-regarded around the league, and, as the team’s assistant head coach, he’s pretty firmly integrated into the LaFleur regime. Barring a total collapse on the order of the 2021 Divisional Round loss to the 49ers, I don’t foresee Bisaccia being ousted.

Should we even be talking about that, though? I can’t answer that question for sure, but I have done a bit of research on that front just in hopes of adding some context.

Here are the Packers’ overall rankings in a few key statistical categories dating back to 2009, covering the complete tenures of five different special teams coordinators. For the return categories, I used Pro Football Reference data sorted low to high (the lower the rank, the better), and for penalties data, I sourced my information from NFLpenalties.com. There, again, lower is better; the fewer penalties your unit produces, the higher you rank.

So is Bisaccia all that bad? It’s hard to say. Clearly, the Packers have produced a lot of penalties during his time so far. That’s obviously a negative. But the Packers have also ranked highly in kick return average and punt return average against under Bisaccia, largely because of Keisean Nixon and Daniel Whelan having strong performances in those areas. Bisaccia, for his part, was instrumental in the decision to put both Nixon and Whelan in position to succeed.

I don’t know what to make of all this, other than to say that the fix for the Packers’ special teams issues is probably the same as any other on an NFL team: it’s a personnel problem. The Packers would probably improve on punt returns if they just stuck with one guy consistently, though they seem committed to rotating Jayden Reed and Keisean Nixon.

But overall, I don’t know! I don’t know what to make of the Packers’ special teams. At least they made a field goal when they needed it most.